John Wheeler came to nondual teaching through his many years of conversation and correspondence with Bob Adamson in Melbourne, the Australian student of Nisargadatta Maharaj. He carries forward that lineage in plain American English, with an unusual emphasis on the immediate and present nature of one’s own being and the absolute uselessness of waiting for a future event called enlightenment.
His teaching reduces to a single pointing. The sense I am, the basic fact of one’s own existence, is itself the door. It is not a thought, not a concept, not an experience to be added to other experiences. It is what is most intimate, most familiar, most undeniable, and at the same time most overlooked. The work, if it can be called work, is to notice what is already and obviously the case. All problems belong to the I, he says. See through the I, and the problems lose their owner.
He has written half a dozen short books in clear unornamented prose, and he carries on long correspondences with seekers around the world, many of which have been collected into volumes that read as a kind of contemporary upadesa-sahasri. He lives quietly in Northern California.
Where to start
- Awakening to the Natural State — his most concentrated short book.
- Shining in Plain View — a longer collection of dialogues and correspondence.
- The Light Behind Consciousness — pointed back at the source-awareness that even consciousness arises within.
- The official site (The Natural State) — books, articles, and contact details.
